The Good Ol' Days

The Flatiron Building. I walked past it every day on my way to work.

I just returned from a trip to New York City. It was mostly a family vacation, but I took a little time out to visit some friends at my old workplace. It's been over ten years since I've visited and the experience was a little overwhelming. New York has changed so much that during my visit I often felt a little disoriented. Once-quiet downtown neighborhoods are now as bustling as midtown. Every parking lot I remember now has a high-rise sitting on it. Once in a while, though, I'd see something completely intact, exactly the way I remember it, and it brought me such delight. My connection to the city--though tenuous at best--is still there.

My husband and I drove our daughters batty pointing out our old haunts. We had a persistent need to press our history upon them. I wanted them to know I was not just someone who drove a minivan and cleaned the house, that I had a few experiences before they came along. But, alas, the girls didn't seem to really care all that much. To them, I'm just Mom and they're more impressed that I make waffles in the morning than the fact that I once crashed a swank party at The Plaza for the President of Ireland. (True story--and yes, Ireland has a President.)

Union Square -- my old neighborhood.

Also while in NYC, I met with my agent. We discussed the next steps in the submission process for my manuscript. He is developing a list of a dozen or so editors he thinks would be interested in this type of novel and will send out a copy of the manuscript along with reviews from my last book. For those of you who are on the fence about getting an agent, here's reason #457 why you should: multiple submissions. Writers acting on their own are often discouraged from this practice as negotiating can get sticky if more than one publisher is interested, but agents do it all the time. In fact, it's expected. So while the unrepresented writer sends out to one editor, waits two months or longer for a response and then sends out again, the writer with an agent gets a bunch of editors looking at their manuscript at the same time. Instead of waiting months or years to find a publisher, the writer with an agent can hear back in a matter of days or weeks.

My earlier excitement has mellowed into a nervous resignation. I've set my expectations so low as to almost be devoid of ambition. When we sent CEDAR HOLE out my mantra was "Knopf or bust!" (That didn't happen, but Simon & Schuster's no slouch.) Now I'm going around thinking, "Whatever happens, I can always self-publish." I've become just as nervous about success as failure. Walking around New York, feeling the once-familiar manic pulse of the city, I kept thinking, "Can I do this? Am I up for it? Do I still have it in me?"

Over vacation I finally got around to reading BENEDICTION by Kent Haruf, the last book in his PLAINSONG trilogy. It was just as elegant and absorbing and heartfelt as I hoped it would be. It will forever have a place among my favorite books. On a related note, my writing mentor, Richard Russo has a book coming out May 3rd, the sequel to NOBODY'S FOOL called EVERYBODY'S FOOL. I will be running out posthaste to my local bookstore to buy it. In a recent BookPage interview, Russo calls out Kent Haruf as one of his literary role models:

"He was not only a great writer, but also a great man. He went about his work with great seriousness and modesty, caring not one iota about fame or fortune, but only the work, always the work."

Great advice to live by.

You can read the full interview HERE.

Writing Habits

The first question I'm usually asked during a reading Q & A is "What is your process?".  Funny how we writers love to compare notes on this front. I'm no exception. At the Richard Russo and Andre Dubus III event I attended a few months back, Dubus mentioned the need for absolute silence when he writes. If I'm remembering correctly, he works in a windowless, sound-proofed room in his basement, wearing a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. He reads a bit of poetry before he begins and then writes for four hours with pen (or was it pencil?) and paper. Russo, also writes longhand, I believe, but prefers public spaces like delis and coffee shops. He mentioned writing a lot at Denny's early in his career. An interesting side effect: every time he drove by a Denny's, he would get an idea for a story. 

I'm a fan of quiet, like Dubus, but a little ambient noise doesn't bother me too much. No voices, no music--unless I'm editing, in which case a little Bach turned really low is fine. I need a window. Nearly any view will do; I once wrote a book with a view of nothing but a single tree and a squirrel who stole food out of my neighbor's garbage. Have you ever seen a squirrel eat an entire New York bagel? I have. It's hilarious.

I'm the only writer I know of who works exclusively on a computer. I can't be the only one--all you monogamous computer-writers please leave a comment so I won't feel so alone. Most writers seem to start out by writing longhand and then transfer their work to a computer on the second draft. I find writing by hand too slow for my thoughts. My tool of choice is a MacBook Pro, which I picked solely for the  feel of the keyboard and the spacing of the keys. I have long fingers and most laptop keyboards cram their keys too close together for my fingers to feel comfortable. The computer program I use is Scrivener, which is insanely affordable and has all the functionality a writer could want. I'm not a shill for the company, but would gladly be one if they asked. 

My office is in a converted dining room. I write at the leather-topped cherry desk I bought as a reward for selling my first novel. Before that, I wrote at an IKEA desk and before that I used a collapsing particle board computer stand someone wanted to throw away. Above my desk is a narrow picture shelf with wedding and baby photos, notes from my kids, a few sea shells we collect on our many jaunts to the beach. Above that, there are two shelves filled with the books I refer to the most often--Irving, Updike, Steinbeck. Most of my favorite authors have John as a first name. Strunk & White is also up there, as is How Fiction Works by James Wood. Before I begin a writing session, I pull down one of the books above my desk and read a few pages to grease the wheels.  

I write in the morning, after my kids get on the bus. I've discovered that if I don't get rolling early enough in the day, the writing never gets done. I'll read over a little of my work from the previous day, careful to stop mid-scene so I'll have a jumping off point at the next session. I used to tell myself that I had to write for four hours a day no matter what, but I found that it was hard to keep track of time amid distractions and that it was too easy to get hung up on something small instead of forging ahead. What worked better was to have a daily word count. My goal is 1,000 words per day and most days I meet my quota within 2-3 hours. On the rare day when I'm really cranking, I can do it in an hour or less. Either way, it's a terrific way to stay focused. When I'm done for the day, I'm done. No matter what else I manage to accomplish that day, if I've met my quota I feel like I've been productive. 

When I'm re-writing, I usually take my laptop to the couch or outside to shake things up a bit. The goal is not word count, but trying to get through the manuscript as thoroughly and quickly as possible. From my experience, re-writing in a compressed timeframe helps me to see the flow of the narrative better and identify inconsistencies. I love the process of re-writing and can easily put in 12- hour days to get the job done.

My writing habits, like anyone else's, have developed over the years through trial and error. What works for me won't necessarily work for someone else and vice versa. What makes the sharing of habits so interesting, perhaps, is discovering those things we writers have in common. With such a solitary pursuit, it's nice to feel like we're not alone.

What's your writing process?